Or are our expectations so low after dealing with some providers, that we paint everyone else with the “you must have the same crappy service as the last guy” brush?
Technology company RightNow, has found that 28% of consumers admitted they would stick with a company even if they were dissatisfied because they believed that competitors were likely to be just as unsatisfactory. That’s a telling statistic for what we deal with on a daily basis and the latest American Express survey has Australia ranked equal last with Britain on measures of service satisfaction behind such countries as the US, France and India. Add to that, 81% of Australians thinking companies are taking their business for granted.
Some of our service level expectations can be unrealistic as we get caught in a cycle of service delivery that has no opportunity to shine because of our need for speed. We want everything now and we want everything to work all the time. Are we setting ourselves up for disappointment because of the need for instant gratification?
It’s easy to see that commoditised products have a tough patch to work in, with regards to service delivery, when everyone around them offers up the same thing. In Australia the telecommunications companies are the worst with a record 51% of consumers reporting a poor customer experience and 63% changing phone companies because of that bad service. We see it in travel constantly, as new products or airlines come online to great reviews but then fall into the mire of mediocrity. JetBlue in the US was excellent for a while and an industry leader in onboard innovation and service but others started to catch up and management didn’t react to the moment and now it’s too easy to switch to another airline as the JetBlue product becomes just another commodity and not an experience.
Sure you can love your customer to death if you are the funky, groovy, itty bitty niche provider of herbal soaps and candles at the local market but most of us need to deal with the giants daily and it’s getting to be a chore. If companies are serious about their service levels they could do worse than listen to Tom Peters the doyen of excellence for the past 25 years.
Excellence in service is all about people and the more companies allow their people to be creative and artistic in their responses to consumers, the more likely those consumers will encounter service excellence. One of Tom Peters favourite department stores, Nordstrom’s in the US, have an unwavering attitude to customer service. Their staff are empowered to do almost anything to satisfy the customer, from wrapping gifts bought at Macys to refunding snow chain purchases which Nordys don’t sell. They have set the benchmark for department store service because they allow their staff to create.
Seth Godin in his book Linchpin talks about being in the moment with your customer and that excellent service is a moving target. It defines what the consumer sees as quality right this minute and tomorrow if the company is great they’ll reset that expectation again. Seth hits the target when he says, service isn’t dead, what’s dead is our appreciation of service and a willingness to pay for it. The act of appreciating the extraordinary belongs to us the customers and the more we do it, the more we’ll get.
To create and connect with people who appreciate it, is the true art customer service. Are you an artist?
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